Cooper Industries has chosen 21 schools throughout the United States and Mexico to receive grants of $10,000 each. Through the Company's innovative Project Pace Education Awards, these schools were nominated by Cooper's local management teams to begin grant-driven partnerships with Cooper facilities to foster vocational "school to work" initiatives.
Partnership recipients for the 2001-2002 awards, listed by business division, are:

Cooper B-Line
Truckee Meadows Community College, Reno, Nev.
Grayson County College, Sherman, TX
Cooper Bussmann
Clyde A. Erwin High School, Black Mountain, N.C.
Wayne Community College, Goldsboro, N.C.

Cooper Crouse-Hinds
Caprock High School, Amarillo, TX
North Lenoir High School, LaGrange, N.C.
Parkway West Area Vocational School, Meadow Lands, Pa.
Arnold R. Burton Technical Center, Roanoke, Va.
Cicero-North Syracuse School District, Syracuse, N.Y.

Cooper Lighting
South Georgia Technical Institute, Americus, Ga.
Ce. Ca. T. I. #187, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Wallace Community College/Sparks Campus, Eufaula, Ala.
Hinds Community College, Vicksburg, Miss.

Cooper Power Systems
SynergyTech, Fayetteville, Ark.
Piedmont Technical College, Greenwood, S.C.
Jamestown Community College, Olean, N.Y.
Waukesha County Technical College, Pewaukee, Wis.

Cooper Tools
Cheraw High School, Cheraw, S.C.
Greenville Vocational Center, Greenville, Miss.
South Piedmont Community College, Monroe, S.C.
York County Vocational Technical School, York, Pa.

For more than a decade, Cooper Industries has supported outstanding vocational education through its Project Pace Education Awards. Cooper created the Project Pace Education Awards in 1989 as a unique method to stimulate collaboration between its manufacturing facilities and local schools. Through Project Pace, Cooper helps to support vocational and/or technical development programs in high schools, vocational schools and community colleges. Cooper is the only company in the U.S. with a grant awards program that actively targets vocational education and school to work initiatives.

"Since the inception of the Project Pace Education Awards program, we have been instrumental in the development of leading edge vocational curricula and improved certification standards. Simply put, at Cooper, we are raising the bar on the quality of vocational education in our plant communities around the world," says John Riley, Cooper's chairman, president and chief executive officer.

In addition to the aforementioned 2001-2002 partnership grants, three schools received special awards for their exemplary partnerships initiated during the previous grant cycle. Miami Valley Career Technology Center, Clayton, OH, won the first-place honor; Hinds Community College in Vicksburg, Miss., won the second-place award; and Wayne Community College in Goldsboro, N.C., won the third-place award.

School partnerships competing for Project Pace Awards are evaluated annually by a panel of judges comprised primarily of experts in the field of education. Judges for the 2000-2001 grant cycle were:

Cami C. Alexander, director of corporate and foundation relations, Texas Business and Education Coalition; John Breed, director of media and government relations, Cooper Industries; Platon Coutsoukis, assistant director of research, Center for Corporate Citizenship, Boston College; Daniel W. Merenda, president and chief executive officer, Partners in Education; and Michele J. Sabino, Ed.D., grant officer, Houston Endowment, Inc.

Cooper Industries, with 2000 revenues of $4.5 billion, is a worldwide manufacturer of electrical products, tools and hardware. Cooper Industries is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and employs more than 34,000 people at over 100 locations around the world. Additional information about Cooper is available on the Company's Internet site: www.cooperindustries.com.

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